1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to Internet communication technology. More particularly, the invention relates to a method and apparatus for populating a caller's identification information to a host-based address book by one or more commands.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Traditionally, if a telephone receiver wants to get a caller's information such as name, telephone number, city and state, etc., he needs to ask the receiver and write down the information manually. “Caller ID” and “Internet Caller ID” technologies have fundamentally changed this situation. As FIG. 1A shows, a regular Caller ID 103 is a device connected to a telephone. When the caller 101 called the receiver 102, the Caller ID 106 displays the caller's telephone number. Using Caller ID, the receiver can recognize who is calling before he decides to pick up the phone. This also works for intra switch. For example, when a call is placed from two people off the same local switch, just like two neighbors, the Caller ID information is still passed.
FIG. 1B illustrates an Internet Caller ID model. When a caller 101 called the receiver 102 while the receiver is online, the Internet Caller ID 104 pops up a message 105 to the receiver 102. The receiver may have a predetermined period of time, 24 seconds or 4 ring cycles for example, to decide to handle the call. He can decide to answer it, or ignore it, or write down the caller's name and phone number and call her later. If the receiver 102 did not take the call within the predetermined period of time, the caller 101 would be sent to a voice mail if the receiver has one.
America Online has developed Internet based telephone technologies called AOL Call Alert (ACA) and AOLHome Voicemail (VOX) which provide various online services including a screen popup showing the number of an incoming call, the name associated with the caller, and the city and state. While a user is online, if a caller calls the user, ACA pops up a message window showing the caller's information. The user may take the call, ignore the call, or click a button to send a prerecorded message. If he decides to ignore the call, the caller is directed to a voice mail. The user may check his voicemail from his e-mail Inbox. He can listen to the voicemail by clicking a button or forward the voicemail to other people. VOX pops up a similar message window as in ACA. In VOX, the voice mail messages are retrievable from the phone set, just like the traditional voice mail.
Using ACA and VOX, if the user wants to record the caller's ID information into his address book associated with his Internet account, he has to copy the information or type the information into the address book and save it. This is inconvenient and it even may cause errors in transcribing.
What is desired is a mechanism with which the user may populate the caller's ID information to his host-based address book by one or more simple commands, such as a single click or double click of his mouse.